In the first week of April, transit boards serving San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties discussed participation in regional transit funding, including SamTrans, San Mateo County Transportation Authority, Caltrain and VTA. The tenor of the conversation was about how to participate, rather than whether.
In SB63, the current legislation led by Wiener and Arreguin to authorize a regional transit ballot measure, both San Mateo County and Santa Clara Counties have the ability to opt in to a regional measure by July 31.
San Mateo County boards discuss “how” rather than “whether”
Board members at SamTrans and SMCTA, including Jeff Gee who serves on the Caltrain board and Redwood City City Council, said they felt encouraged with the way their desires were being considered, including allowing the county to opt in, and not including last year’s provision on agency consolidation. (SamTrans runs SamTrans local bus service and provides shared back-end services for Caltrain, and SMCTA is the funding agency that collects and allocates the county sales tax. In Santa Clara County VTA serves both functions)
Decisions about how to participate will depend on polling and the outcomes of the analysis that MTC is hiring a consultant to assess the amount it would be reasonable to contribute to BART. Staff reported that SMC will be polling shortly on a set of options that could include participating in a regional measure, or a local measure with contribution to the regional agencies Caltrain and BART and to regional coordination initiatives, or a combination of both (see options below, and in the staff report).
Interestingly, a few SMCTA board members including Anders Fung (Millbrae City Council) and Carlos Romero (East Palo Alto City Council) expressed a desire for representation on the BART board in exchange for a greater level of financial contribution, and several board members including Supervisor Corzo expressed a desire to improve relations with BART.
VTA board may be warming to regional measure participation
On Thursday at VTA, which earlier on had preferred “side by side” participation using a local measure to contribute funds to Caltrain, BART, and regional transit coordination, participating in a regional measure may be looking more appealing.
San Jose Mayor Mahan said at the VTA board that VTA had delayed polling during the recent strike, they now want to move forward to poll, and there may be more motivation to join the region, strongly implying that the extended strike may affect public opinion about VTA in the near term. Despite the potential negative public sentiment Mahan urged polling soon due to the legislative timeline.
Ex Officio VTA board member Burt (MTC Commission, Caltrain board, Palo Alto City Council) raised an issue he had mentioned earlier that morning at the Caltrain board. Burt observed that Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the business association that had previously funded Santa Clara County ballot measures, is no longer interested in leading local ballot measures, and is in the process of merging with Bay Area Council, a regional business organization that has expressed interest in supporting the regional measure. Burt suggested potentially joining the regional measure at a lower level, 1/4 cent, and reauthorizing Measure A later, since it expires in 2036.
Mahan, Burt, and Abe Koga (VTA, MTC, and Santa Clara County Supervisor) all mentioned the issue that was brought up and agreed at MTC, that discussion about funding obligations to Caltrain should be negotiated in the context of the Caltrain Joint Powers Authority board. Mahan mentioned negotiations about the funding formula for the amount each agency contributes to Caltrain, funding service to Gilroy, and unspecified issues with governance.
Caltrain funding, governance, and the regional measure timeline
At the early March meeting of the Caltrain board, Caltrain chair Heminger had appointed a subcommittee with board members Heminger, Gee and Abe Koga to discuss the funding formula as well as governance topics.
Regarding the funding formula and timeline, at the MTC meeting in late March, Alicia Jean-Baptiste, the San Francisco MTC representative for Mayor Lurie, agreed with Mayor Mahan that it makes sense for the Caltrain contribution negotiation to take place within the Caltrain Joint Powers Authority.
But Jean-Baptiste said forcefully that San Francisco did not want to see a delay in the timeline, since San Francisco and other counties depend on the overall multi-county funding solution to keep the regional agencies running, whether counties participate within a multi-county measure or side by side with separate measures contributing to the multi-county regional agencies and multi-county service coordination.
Less appetite for Caltrain governance ballot measure games of chicken
In 2020, Caltrain Measure RR almost didn’t get on the ballot, with the three county partner agencies using the fiscal crisis and ballot measure deadline as high stakes negotiation to address long-deferred governance issues.
Last October, the Caltrain board discussed an update on the Caltrain governance process, which has been moving forward gradually since the Measure RR agreement. In the negotiations to get Caltrain Measure RR on the ballot in 2020, the board agreed on a set of changes including having an executive director exclusively for Caltrain, hiring a handful of senior positions for the rail agency, getting the agreement for shared services provided by SamTrans, such as finance, HR and IT, documented in writing, completing repayment to San Mateo County for the 1990s purchase of the right of way, transferring the right of way to Caltrain, transferring the pension responsibility, and updating the governing documents created in the 90s.
On the topic of governance and the terms of the managing agency agreement with SamTrans, VTA had floated a proposal to enable the Caltrain board to replace SamTrans as managing agency with one year’s notice (p. 187). San Mateo County partners didn’t agree, and it seems clear from the discussions at the Caltrain board and MTC, that San Francisco doesn’t want to use this year’s impending ballot legislation deadline as leverage to drive a large-scale restructuring of Caltrain.
Around the world, service contracting for public transportation is a fairly common practice that can include backoffice functions and/or service operations. Many lessons have been learned over several decades of initiatives around the globe with mixed results. Eno Center for Transportation and Transit Center have published research reports with case studies and discussions of effective practices.
According to the most recent 2024 Eno study, contracts on the shorter end of the scale run 3-5 years in length with options to extend. The earlier 2017 Eno/Transit Center study made clear that key factors for success include labor conditions that ensure a qualified and motivated workforce.
Consideration of alternative service contracting options may be a reasonable thing to do based on thoughtful analysis. Caltrain already uses shared services from SamTrans, so unsharing services could could lead to cost increases; an assessment would be needed. Also, it’s not clear why an analysis of the cost-effectiveness of alternative shared service contracts would apply only to Caltrain and SamTrans, and not other agencies. And it’s certainly not reasonable to seek a year to year agreement for back-end services, nor is it reasonable to seek to drive this sort of major change in a three month time window that risks a regional funding framework that millions of people depend on to prevent a collapse of the region’s transit system.
Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like there’s majority support for handling the important discussions about Caltrain’s managing agency as a high-stakes gamble. For agency leaders, it may feel like they are negotiating against each other, but in actuality they are negotiating against riders who depend on transit, cities that depend on a transportation system that supports economic vitality and housing goals, and drivers that depend on keeping congestion off the roads.
Transit riders demand that agencies work together to keep the multi-agency system running
At all of the board meetings, there were transit riders encouraging regional solutions, since transit riders use and depend on Caltrain, BART, VTA, SamTrans and Muni to get to where they are going.
Fortunately, agencies and counties seem to be converging on options to keep the transit system running and to continue improving coordination. The situation is more positive than last Spring when these agencies and counties opposed last year’s version of a regional measure bill.
However, a 2026 tax bringing in $560-640Million will kick in too late to prevent initial cuts and is not enough to improve service and address climate goals. There will need to be some combination of state, regional and local funding puzzle pieces fitting together.